


Ready for the Storm

by infiniteviking



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Betrayal, Tron: Evolution, Tron: Uprising
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteviking/pseuds/infiniteviking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As unrest spreads across the Grid, Radia calls upon one of her people to perform a task that will not be remembered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready for the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as part of the Tron Female Character Ficathon, for ISOlatedThinker. Prompt: Ada helps Radia with a task, or vice versa.

The artisan saw Radia in midsentence, nearly stopping in the middle of her analysis of the terrain map taking up most of the room. She recovered quickly, barely breaking the flow, but her wide dark eyes drew the others' attention, and silence spread like a pool as they turned to see, followed by a rush of whispers.

Radia raised her hands slightly, stepping down into the hangar. "Peace," she said, her low voice carrying in the enclosed space, acknowledging each part of the group individually and collectively. "I'm only here to look. This is the plan for Sector 350, isn't it?"

It was, and some of the technicians lost their awe as they crowded forward. A few she recognized -- Arjian dowsers and shipwrights, a couple of Bostrumites who'd made a splash some cycles ago with a new support algorithm for light-rail beams, and of course the founders of the new settlement, strong-voiced ISOs blazing bright with their vision. They surrounded her with _it's only a test schematic_ and _but you'd have to ignore the faultlines here_ and _that's what I've been trying to tell him_ and _natural power conjunctions_ and _the symbology_ ; but others stayed back, fooled by their limited visual tracking into thinking she didn't notice the crowd's periphery shifting as she circled the map.

That problem, or phenomenon, had grown more widespread in the past hundred cycles, as Radia's people intermingled with the Basics, who understood so few of the particular gifts that had been given to the elders of her kind. Many latter-day ISOs were born muted; the Sea was failing, some said, while others, less aware, shrugged and guessed it was meant to be, or grew ashamed or confused about their differences, or forgot that they mattered at all. And in the forgetfulness the divisions grew, and grew, and grew.....

Some of the whispers had started again, and Radia listened without seeming to as the artisans explained the quarrel they'd been having about how to route energy to and around a set of terraced lakes. The plans were beautiful, the map unworthy of the unease and suspicion circling it like a hungering leechpack. Even her own appearance, unannounced and unprecedented, was no longer taken at face value; no inspection had been scheduled here, and her people, like the Basics, had learned to distrust what was strange.

"She's probably inspecting us for isolationism," muttered a younger engineer, Inger from the Grid's first Basic-free colony, apparently thinking she was out of hearing range. Once, Radia would have reached out to touch the little one across the connection the Grid had granted her, turning to see her surprise, sharing a laugh at understanding and a lesson learned. This time she just looked -- looked as only she could, without turning her head, without a sign that she had overheard.

She was just in time to perceive Ada, the dark-haired artisan who'd been speaking when she arrived, laying a hand on Inger's arm, with a look of silent warning.

Ada. Radia remembered. Tall and gangly in her youth, lean, quiet, and shy when she presented the results of the first surveys she'd made seeking power sources for the colonies -- but the stone-cold Outlands parameters had opened firelike to the tools she built. As her experience grew her shyness had melted away and not returned for a long time. She was silent now, wary, watching, her circuits a healthy white but her light shuttered and dim.

The wireframe rippled across Radia's skin as she stepped deeper into the simulated mountain range. "And here?" she said. Callouses -- that was the User word; protective scars born of many tiny hurts. _All of us, each of us, develop our own thick skins to shield ourselves from one another. Ah, we grow cold....._ "This formation is known for its instability; that's why the highway diverts over there. How do you plan to--"

They showed her, in such detail that most of the onlookers could not keep themselves away. Even Inger contributed a word or two, carrying behind her boldness an endless sorrow for the brothers she'd lost to the Sector Twelve attacks. But she never spoke of them outright, and Radia knew that her silent invitation to an audience, always open to any ISO truly in need, would go unanswered.

**.o0o.**

The artisans drifted away from the hangar at the shift's end, white and green clusters and single figures bidding one another farewell. Radia waited out of sight, knowing each by name and by heart as they passed, and her blessing went with them. She stepped into the path again as the one she wanted turned the corner, and held very still at the flinch that came before the ISO's recognition.

"I feel you, Ada," she said quietly. She had traded the gown of her rank for a simple dark cloak, to shield her identity from afar, but any of her people would have known her face to face. "I don't mean you harm."

"Of course." Ada turned, checking the nearby corridors automatically, and then remembered who stood before her and faced Radia again, her eyes reflecting a moment of unguarded pain until she closed it off: but out of respect, not deception; she was older and understood.

Then she smiled, and some of the shutters fell away. "I'm glad you came to see what we're building."

Radia smiled too, and held out her hands. "It will be beautiful."

"Are you visiting all of the teams?"

"Yes." Radia drew her close, feeling again the lean strength and honesty that had made her the first and best choice for what had to come: for the whispers had been right, though they little knew what about. "But not with the same questions."

They walked together, arm in arm, up the steep hill facing the residential area that bordered the Sailer lines, but at the top of the first ridge they turned aside, following a slanting cliff-face away from the colony's glow. There was light out here of a different kind, gentle and rippling, casting flickering shadows on the dark base-code. Under the seamless pile, well remembered from maps and from previous visits, the least and quietest of the colony's energy-springs danced and flowed in its enclosing pool.

Ada's light had grown stronger as they walked on the land she'd shaped many cycles before. Her hand lay cool on Radia's sleeve, and for a moment, leaning against the rail built expressly for people to lean on, she closed her eyes with an unspoken prayer, the same wordless, boundless cry for hope that Radia had carried for too many cycles to number.

Her eyes still held shadows as she turned to Radia, searching her elder's gaze. "The colony," she said, "it's another one for ISOs only. No Basics allowed."

"I know." Radia nodded. "I spoke with the founders; their passion was compelling."

"Inger says she feels safe in Bostrum, but she never stops watching the sky....." Ada stared down into the pool, struggling with the incompatible ideas and irrevocable changes. "Then you think it's right? To cast them aside, even the ones who feel for us?"

"I think it has to be," answered Radia sadly. "For now; for some of us. But the loss is great for all. There is no right way to read this riddle, but there are things we may do, though the future is dark to us now."

She looked out over the spring, the corners of her hood ruffled in a light wind, seeking with her mind the vast wilderness beyond the enclosing stones and the sparking clusters of life even further beyond. Ada shifted, leaning to see her expression, unnamed fears and silent questions circling her until Radia, still far-seeing, touched her hand and quieted them.

"There is a task I have in mind," said Radia quietly. "You are one of very few who could accomplish it; yet you are not alone. I am not here to command and you may refuse without fault, for it is a difficult task, and its taker will not be remembered except by herself."

"And you," interjected Ada, with a little of her old irreverence at the topic being raised at last; Radia couldn't help a small smile. "That doesn't bother me -- not to be remembered. What do you want me to do?"

Radia turned to her, the youngster who'd pulled her by the hand to see her first bubbling energy-pool, now grown and hailed across the system for her works.

_Not forever -- Codestream, not forever! but I've come to ask you to cast that identity away....._

"I want you to walk the Grid. Disguise yourself as a Basic and go among them; keep your silence, for it is not our part to test them, but you will find as many friends as enemies there. You will be a fault specialist, a geologist, mapping changes in the base-code that carries us all."

Ada stepped back, breath catching on a word. Some ISOs donned and shed personas as easily as fashions -- they _were_ fashions in some parts of the colonies, just another canvas in the never-ending game of self-invention -- but Ada had always been one of the constant ones, and that made it harder.

She took it in, though, finally, never one to rule on an incomplete dataset. "To what end?" she asked, barely heard over the quiet lapping of the pool.

Radia knelt, filling her hands with power, lifted it to drip slow fire from her fingers: power that Ada had found, channeled, and developed. "Bring forth light," she said, watching it kindle with its own dancing life in the artisan's eyes, "as you know best how. Create new pools outside each inhabited city and district. Delve deep in secret; call energy to the surface in the darkest, most desolate places."

"But no one's supposed to know?" Ada glanced at the pool, then back up, visibly calculating vectors, resources, timeframes, and contacts who couldn't be relied upon by a wandering Basic with whom they had no history. "Even from the programs who live there?"

Radia nodded. "Leave them there in the wilderness. If all goes well, they will be found in due time, with wonder and delight in their discovery."

"And if it doesn't?"

If it didn't -- what a wealth of half-perceived miseries the question conjured now. Radia gave the only answer she could, the intuitive, contextless answer gleaned in blind impressions from the Grid herself.

"There will be a need for them."

Whatever happened, there would be a need.

Ada's head bowed; her dark hair swept over her face. Then, slowly, she took Radia's hands, letting the energy between them spill in a silvery stream back to its source, and answered, "I will."  
_____


End file.
